A $4 million capital campaign is underway to make long-needed updates of locker rooms, showers, create family locker room.
Wayne Risher/The Commercial Appeal

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Kids play Sharks and Minnows at the Fogelman YMCA Day Camp in downtown Memphis Thursday afternoon. The century-old Downtown YMCA, which was fully renovated and reopened about 30 years ago, is due for an update and in the midst of a $4 million capital campaign to get the work done.(Photo: Jim Weber/The Commercial Appeal)Buy Photo

When she was 14, growing up on the south side of Chicago, a child of drug-addicted parents, the Y gave her hope.

Now she wants to pass along that hope to young Memphians as well as Downtown office workers and residents who are the Louis T. Fogelman YMCA’s target market.

The Fogelman Y’s executive director, Graves is helping lead a $4 million capital campaign that would, among other things, build space for a Y Achievers program like the one that lifted Graves out of a teenaged depression.

The program will also modernize and update the rest of the Downtown YMCA, which dates to 1909 and last received a major overhaul in 1987. It will refurbish obsolete showers and locker rooms and carve out a new family locker room to accommodate people with children.

It will create a new entrance fronting on Madison, across the street from where Walk-Off Properties is pouring millions into The Commonwealth, a renovation of the old Medical Arts Building to house SouthernSun Asset Management.

Fogelman YMCA officials are on a mission to ensure the facility’s membership keeps up with Downtown’s office and residential growth and the arrival of a new, younger workforce at offices ranging from Wunderlich Securities to ServiceMaster.

While a variety of small gyms and fitness programs have sprouted Downtown since the Y was last renovated, Graves downplayed the competitive angle. She said the YMCA offers so much more: A community center serving all ages with fitness, healthy living and spiritual support.

“While we have a gym aspect, it doesn't define us. It's not who we are," Graves said.

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Day campers gather around Angelic Graves, Executive Director of the Downtown Fogelman YMCA, during a tour of the century-old building which is now the subject of a $4 million capital campaign for rennovation.(Photo: Jim Weber/The Commercial Appeal)

Graves and Cato led a tour of the building this week, gliding through groups of exuberant young summer camp participants and talking about where the money will be spent.

Hayley, who’s retired from the software business, said from a user perspective, the locker rooms are the direst need being addressed by the campaign.

“The shower and locker room area is pretty dated,” Hayley said. “When we take prospective members on tours, the facility looks pretty good but we get questions about the showers and locker rooms on both the ladies and men’s sides,” Hayley said.

The capital campaign received a major boost recently when First Tennessee Bank made a $1 million commitment that pushed the total to $2,460,000.

Already the campaign has renovated the kid’s corner, which provides child care for members’ children from 6 months to 8 years old, and refurbished saunas and steam rooms.

Cato said because of the way the building was retrofitted in the past, “The men’s locker room is three times the size of the women’s locker room, so they’ll take that space out for the family locker room.”

Graves said she’s excited about what will happen with about 7,000 square feet of currently unfinished space on the third floor.

It will be renovated to house space where Fogelman can offer a Y Achievers program, which provides children in grades 3-12 with help on academic achievement, life skills, positive self-image, career exploration, college readiness and service learning experiences.

It’s the space where First Tennessee will offer financial literacy classes, and where officials hope to have a teaching kitchen, a small version of the facility at the new Crosstown Concourse YMCA.

“We’re not trying to build a Ritz hotel. We’re trying to bring it up to par,” Graves said. “It’s really not about the facilities. The facilities are really just a tool for us to be able to offer the programs to a growing Downtown population.”

The YMCA has been a guiding influence in her life since Graves, 34, stepped inside Chicago’s South Side YMCA 20 years ago.

She had been living with an aunt since age 9 because of her biological parents’ struggles with drug addiction. She was depressed and looking for a job and thinking about committing suicide if she didn’t find work.

The staff offered her a volunteer position, with a stipend. She became involved in Y Achievers and stuck with it. A YMCA-sponsored college visit helped her land a full scholarship at Claflin University in Orangeburg, South Carolina.

She earned a degree in mass communications and returned to the Chicago-area YMCA organization, where she eventually rose to become executive director of the South Side branch.

Graves came to Memphis because she was looking for a safer environment for her daughter, now 10. She was also attracted to the YMCA of Memphis & the Mid-South because “The Y here puts a lot of emphasis on its Christian mission.”

"One of the reasons I have the outlook on the Y that I have, is I didn't learn how to swim at the Y. I didn't lose weight at the Y," Graves said. "The Y literally saved my life."